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Welcome to Northeastern University’s science and research blog. We call it iNSolution because that’s what our faculty and student researchers are in the business of—finding solutions to societal problems while simultaneously contributing to the fundamental knowledge base of their respective fields.

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The social side of Sandy

When dis­aster strikes, we rely on our social net­works for sup­port. During hur­ri­cane Sandy, neigh­bors helped neigh­bors by sharing elec­trical power with those who’d lost it or removing tree limbs from each other’s rooftops. In many cases, the help we get during emer­gen­cies comes from whomever hap­pens to be nearby, but more and more our cell phones—if they still work—connect us to more dis­tant resources.

North­eastern pro­fessor David Lazer hopes to under­stand how people behave during dis­as­ters through an app he and his team devel­oped for mobile phones, which archive much of that behavior in call and text logs.

The Sandy app is avail­able through the web­site Vol­un­teer Sci­ence, which Lazer and Drew Mar­golin, a post-​​doc in his lab, recently launched. It allows users like you and me to par­tic­i­pate in research in the form games and apps like the one for Sandy. They hope to even­tu­ally see a huge flow of people through the site, playing these sorts of games for fun. After all, the ques­tion of how people behaved during Sandy is just one of a lim­it­less number that researchers could ask using this approach.

But back to the Sandy app. Once down­loaded, it will ask vol­un­teers to answer ques­tions about their sit­u­a­tion during the storm, what resources they needed or pro­vided to others, and how they con­nected with those they did. It will then reach into the archives, choose ten random calls, and ask ques­tions like “How is this person related to you?” and “Did you get what you needed from this person?”

Post-​​disaster inter­viewing is stan­dard pro­tocol for emer­gency orga­ni­za­tions like the Red Cross, but these rely entirely on people’s mem­o­ries, which are often skewed during times of stress. The new app is “not meant to sub­sti­tute for other methods, it’s just adding a pow­erful com­ple­ment,” said Lazer.

“We think of it as the 21st cen­tury improve­ment over the inter­view,” said Mar­golin, who is leading the project. The method will add valu­able data that inter­viewing alone cannot. For instance, people who had a flood of inbound calls during the storm may have been support-​​hubs without real­izing it.

Pre­vious research has looked at static call detail records, pro­vided by the phone com­pany, which includes things like the cell tower that was accessed and the number that was called. Those studies have revealed dis­tinc­tive pat­terns of behavior. For example, the number of calls between people 20 years apart in age increases during emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, sug­gesting more calls between par­ents and children.

“But the problem is we can’t ask those people ques­tions about their con­text,” said Lazer. They can’t ask whether the older person someone called was in fact their parent. “In some ways it’s like one hand clap­ping. Here we’re trying to supply the con­text and make a little bit more noise.”

While the app will pro­vide invalu­able new infor­ma­tion for emer­gency relief efforts, it will also pro­vide an improve­ment over cur­rent net­work sci­ence research methods. “Trying to build a bridge between the obser­va­tional data, the mas­sive pas­sive data that’s being cre­ated about all of us every day and deeper soci­o­log­ical con­structs,” said Lazer. That’s the goal for the whole Vol­un­teer Sci­ence plat­form, he said.

Readers can par­tic­i­pate in the Sandy study and encourage New York and New Jersey area friends to do the same by vis­iting www​.vol​un​teer​science​.com. The app is cur­rently only avail­able for Android phones.

About the Writer

Angela Herring is the science writer for the Northeastern news team. In a past life, she made fullerenes (aka bucky balls) at a small chemical company outside of Boston while freelance writing for the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the Broad Institute and Novartis Biomedical Research Institutes. She earned her Bachelor's degree in chemistry and literature from Bennington College in 2005. In addition to writing stories for the News@Northeastern, she also maintains the university's research blog: iNSolution.

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